Schedule - Repeating Appointments

This article demonstrates how to create repeating appointments in the Schedule Ability of MacPractice.

Repeating Appointments are handled differently depending on what build of MacPractice you're running. This article contains explanations of both methods.

If you're not sure of the build of MacPractice you're on, you can find out by navigating to the MacPractice menu and click "About MacPractice", then look for the "MacPractice Build" number.

• Repeating Appointments in Build 11 and later
• Repeating Appointments in Builds 10 and earlier 

Repeating Appointments in Builds 11 and later
To schedule a repeating appointment, you'll first schedule an appointment for a patient as normal. Once you have that down on the schedule, right-click the appointment block and select "Repeat".

The new repeating appointments sheet is similar to the Appointments tab in the Drawer in older builds of MacPractice. At the top of the sheet, you can see all of the appointment details, as well as patient DOB and phone number. 

If you have purchased AutoRemind on your MacPractice License, there will also be an "AutoRemind" checkbox in the upper right hand corner of the Repeating Appointment window, which you can check to ensure all repeating appointments created will have appointment reminders enabled.

By checking the "Repeat Appointments" checkbox, you can configure a repeating appointment to repeat (and end) at an interval of your choosing, from Days, Weeks, Months, or Years. Once you're happy with how your repeating appointment is configured, you can click the "Create Repeats" button. For example, if you plan on having a patient come in every two months starting in July for the remainder of this year, you would enter fields as so, then click the Create Repeats button. The resulting screen would appear as so:

The Repeated Appointments table at the bottom displays every appointment that will be generated with this configuration. If this is acceptable, click the "Save" button in the lower right of the Appointment sheet to save the generated appointments to the schedule.

Deleting Repeating Appointments in Build 11+
In order to delete repeating appointments in Builds 11 and higher, you'll need to do this from the Repeating Appointment window.

First, you'll right click the original appointment or any of the recurring repeating appointments, and click Repeat to go back to the Repeating Appointment window.

Once you are there, you can right click or option-click Appointments in the Repeated Appointments table.

Select the Appointment tab. In the upper half of the window, you will see some information about the selected appointment. In the lower half of the drawer, you will see two tabs: Treatments and Repeats. The Treatments tab will display a list of any treatment plan items that are associated to the appointment. The Repeats tab allows you to set up the repeating appointment. Check the Repeat Appointment checkbox to activate the fields.

The first line in the repeat area allows you to set the repeat frequency.

 

Select the time period (Day(s), Week(s), Month(s), Year(s)) from the pop-up button, then enter how often the appointment should repeat.

 

Use the End fields to determine how long you would like the repeats to continue.

You can choose After Times or On Date. If you select After Times, enter the number of repetitions in the provided field.

 

For example, you may wish the appointment to repeat 30 times. In that case, enter 30 in the field.

Note: The After Times feature does not count the first occurrence of the appointment. So, if you wanted 30 total appointments, including the initial appointment, you would enter "29" in the field. If you select On Date, simply enter the date you wish the repetitions to cease.

When you have finished selecting your options, save your changes by going up to the Edit menu and selecting Save Record, or using the Command-S keyboard shortcut.

Note: When you save a repeating appointment, all information in the original appointment will be populated to the future repetitions, including Status, Type, Notes, and so on. That means if your original appointment is set to "Confirmed", all the repeating appointments associated to it will also have a status of "Confirmed". If the original appointment has a note indicating "Patient is running late", all future repetitions of the appointment will have the same note.

You will see an alert, asking if you are sure you wish to create the repetitions. The alert will also inform you that if a repeating appointment would conflict with an existing appointment, the repeat appointment will NOT be created for that occurrence. Such appointments will need to be manually created.

 

Deleting Repeating Appointments in Build 10 and less
You can delete a repeating appointment by selecting the appointment in the schedule and pressing Delete on your keyboard, right-clicking the appointment in the Schedule and selecting Delete, or by selecting the repeat record in the Repeats tab of the Appointment drawer and pressing the Delete key. An alert will appear with three options:

• Delete Appointment & Repeat - Select this option to remove the appointment from the schedule, and delete the repeat line from the drawer.
• Cancel - Click this button to make no changes, and return to the previous screen.
• Delete Only Repeat Information - This will delete the Repeated Appointment entry in the Appointments drawer, but will leave the appointment intact.